I was wondering...does anyone else struggle with the need to cover the requirements for the HSE/GED and outcomes for Post-Assessments like TABE in mathematics? How do you do it? I was reading and article: "Uncovering the Math Curriculum" by Marilyn Burns and she describes opening up the math. But does narrowing the focus keep programs from making the educational gains they need? Do learners benefit more or less from this type of instruction? What are your thoughts?
Brooke
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Hey Brooke!
We use the TABE test and students definitely want to improve test scores and sometimes don't see the correlation. I don't spend time talking about TABE in class, but I make sure to note what we've done in class that is tested on the TABE. For example, when I teach fractions I don't say "You need this for your TABE test." I do say "This will be on your GED exam."
I believe that if you prepare students for the GED exam, then you will teach (or reinforce) the skills needed to grow on the TABE exam. I do this because students don't come to my school to do well on the TABE, they come for their GED (and other things). It is easier to sell the work and thus keep the student's interest high this way. I think this way benefits the students more because they're engaged because it will benefit them.
Thoughts?
I love Marilyn Burns... I want to revolutionize our teaching per her approach. I love her https://mathreasoninginventory.com/
I'd love to research whether de-emphasizing "practice for the test problems!" and focusing on concepts and patterns would improve our students' math performance on tests and everywhere else math comes up.
We don't prep people for tests -- they get here with a diploma but often no skills, so I don't know if the experiences compare (our students *know* they have to take harder math after the basic ones).
When our lowest scorers were taught procedurally, the results were extremely dismal. 2 out of 40 students in the last semester they did it like that went on to pass another math course -- our developmental, pre-algebra course. The other 42 either didn't make it through the initial course, or didn't make it through Pre-Algebra.
From working with the students, it was not something acceleration or encouragement would remedy: they were striving to memorize procedures and applying them in all kinds of weird ways and places.
We're getting big improvements, though I'm not really sure we're up to even 50% success rate (I know it's at least 15%, so we're 3 times as good as before... but that's still dismal.)
Here, in our pre-algebra class, I've been really impressed at a trend towards trying to understand. Maybe it's just a good semester, but I see folks coming in who have had very little previous success w/ math, and who said that they "just used the calculator," who have shifted to thinking about things and doing them "by hand," and ... be sitting down... sometimes doing things like 76/4 *by hand with long division* instead of getting the calculator. I think it is because the faculty teaches the concepts... and then the students spend hours with ALEKS practicing with the adaptive software that builds from really basic to 'the real thing.' (I wish it had some more visuals, but...)
If you're really bored, https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/stigler_dev-math.pdf is an article that outlines developmental math student conceptual knowledge (or lack there of):
If asked to find the least common multiple of 6 and 9, they’d say “3.” Asked what percent 21 is of 14, they’d flip the numbers.
They would do what "looked right."
Then this: ” Students’ tendencies to make the errors outlined above were quite consistent: when they could make these errors, they did. We looked at the ten items on each of the two tests that were answered correctly by the most students. None of these items provided opportunities for making the kinds of errors identified above.”